Wednesday, August 3, 2011

I got a few hours to base up and partially paint Hasslefree minis Svala and dynamic kaylee-For one of my Skulldred demo game warbands (aka the orange team!). Kev White, as usual, rocks my socks with two awesome figures, understated details, fluid, dynamic and paintable as heckaroonie on a stick. Yep, well worth your cash - get em here.

Hasslefree Svala and Kaylee (converted) WIP paint jobs

I lightly converted Kaylee, shaving off her chaos symbol and replacing it with a grinning monster face, as well as adding extra fabric to her arms to give more space for her team colours. All this was done with greenstuff. I then decked out her base with mushrooms, creepers and leaves to make use of all the new space on my BRAND NEW BASES!!!!

So the story with my bases is that I really needed some extra room around my figures so they dont bump up against each other in gameplay. I also like decorating them, so having the extra room is great. I made a bunch of lipped deep dish bases, since I hate the way you cannot pick up lipped bases, but have had issues with leeching oils through the resin- clearly my resin is out of date :(
I decided to try out some laser cut 30mm ply discs and you know, I love them! I am sorely tempted to move my whole collection across to them now.
What can I say? Cheap, roomy, easy to pick up, easy to modify, light, have a little bounce to protect the figure, soak black paint up so they chip black, and look the business. At 30mm, they are the exact same footprint as Malifaux or Warmachine bases, but without the annoying lip. You know, I am totally sold on this. Very surprised, considering my experience with plywood bases for HotT has been less than spectacular.

So you can see the raw wooden bases onto which I have mounted some dead sexy rare citadel gems- including the 'other' black dwarf (see my earlier posts for the Jes Goodwin masterpiece from Asgard).

The only pain with the ply bases is that the laser scoring around the edge needs sanding off. I found if you use two grits- course to get the lines off and a really fine to polish it really shiney, it looks just like plastic once painted. Using a diluted chaos black wash allowed the paint to soak in- making the base absorb the paint deeply and so it chips to black- which will keep my collection looking a little less played with hopefully. The underside, being perfectly flat, also looks nice when you flip a model on its side too- no ugly slottabase grooves.

I do worry about acids from sap in the plywood leeching into the model and causing leadrot. A few really old models I have prised off wooden bases show damage where they contact the wood. I have kept a thin layer of epoxy around the figures to protect them, and sealed the surface with superglue here and there. That ought'a hold it.

I think its about time citadel allowed 30mm bases for 40k- the models have scale creep'ed to a point where they could really do with the extra stability and protection. Don't you agree?